Badass Children Way More Heroic Than You

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes, emphasis on size. See, normally when we think of heroes, our mind goes to Die Hard or a super soldier fighting on some distant field. Of course, not all heroes chose to be heroes. Some have barely learned how to speak before becoming utter badasses ...

Ever try to hotwire a car? Pretty hard, right? Okay, now imagine you've never done it before, and you're being told how to do it by someone stuck inside a burning car, and the person in the car is your father and — oh, right — you're eight years old. That's what happened with Michael Bowron. He and his dad were driving when his dad swerved to avoid a collision, and wrecked the car. His father was trapped, but Bowron wasn't. He managed to escape the car and, upon realizing, "Hey, being stuck in a car that's leaking oil sucks," attempted to save his dad with a tire iron.

Once that didn't work, he thought of the radio. With his dad telling him what to do, Bowron managed to hotwire the radio to a spare battery and call his mom for help. She got the ambulance and, after being trapped for roughly an hour, Bowron's father was removed from the car and taken to the hospital. All thanks to the mini-McGuyver, who is now guaranteed to get so much stuff. "Dad, can I get this toy?" "No, son." "Remember that time I saved you from a burning wreckage?" "...Fine."

Timmy Miles was just twelve years old when God decided to write a Stephen King fanfic, using Miles and his family as the characters. That day, Miles and his siblings were taken out by their own mother, who drove into a remote area before making all of them — including herself — take a massive amount of pills. All evidence points to her being suicidal and homicidal, which is a super-bad combination for a kid to have in a mom. While waiting for death to overtake them, Miles' mother fell asleep in the still-running car. Because the world isn't cruel enough, the car then burst into flames. Miles woke up and pulled his siblings out of the burning car, but unfortunately it was too late for their mother, who died due to smoke inhalation.

Of course, that's not bad enough! See, when we say "remote," we mean really remote. The place Miles and company were in was so cold and inhospitable that, left with no other options, the siblings had to make their way back to the now-not-burning car, and stay there overnight — with their mom/would-be-killer's dead body — or else die of exposure. But due to Miles bravery and quick thinking, he and his siblings managed to survive one of God's most horrific tales to date.

For most of us, getting shot is something we can only think of in the abstract. We like to talk over coffee with our friends about how we would react if a robber burst in right then, or we'll keep guns in our house in case of an invader. The truth is, most people don't know how they'd react to an act of violence, especially one involving a gun. But Sarah Rivera knows. Her reaction? Being a badass.

Rivera was hanging around the front of her New York City building when gunfire range out. Almost everyone else scurried because, well, what else are you going to do? But not Rivera. One of the people who had been walking by was a father with a baby in a stroller. When the shots rang out, the man ducked and ran off, leaving his baby both in the stroller and in harm's way. Rivera wasn't going to take any of that, however. She grabbed the stroller and began pushing it to safety when she was shot. Luckily, it was a non-fatal wound and she sirvived. The doctors have even said they're leaving the bullet in her leg, perhaps so every time she goes through a metal detector, she can make everyone in the nearby area understand just how amazing she really is.

How much money would you need to even attempt to lift a 3000-pound tractor? No money, because you're not interested in trying ridiculous things that you could never, ever accomplish? This just goes to show that you're not nearly as tough as two teenage girls. Hannah Smith and Haylee Smith were sixteen and fourteen (respectively), when they came home to find their father trapped underneath his ton-and-a-half tractor. Despite how Olympians have a hard time lifting even half as much, the two girls straight-up ripped the tractor off their father, saving his life and outing themselves as superheroes.

We're not joking about the superhero thing. They have to be, right? Doesn't this whole story sound like something out of a Superman movie? Imagine Clark Kent hearing his father caught under the tractor and — with strength he never knew he had — lifting it off of him. This is some definite origin story stuff these girls have got going on..

Picture the 1960's. On a bus, a young black woman sits down near the front. A few stops later, a white woman comes on demanding her seat. Instead of getting up, the black woman decides to take a stand. She tells the white woman she's not getting up, and the woman can find another seat. Then she's thrown off the bus. Rosa Parks, right? Except, no, it's not. This is the story of Claudette Colvin.

Claudette Colvin was just fifteen years old when she decided she had enough racist garbage, and spat in its face. What's more, instead of a Rosa Parks-esque explanation of being "just so tired," Colvin out-and-out was like, "I'm not moving for you just because you're pale as a sheet; get away from me, ghost." We're paraphrasing, of course, but that's still an awesome story that could inspire people.

The problem? Colvin was a teenager, about to be a mother, and not exactly the most respectable. So when the NAACP needed a face for their protest, they went with Parks, who was older (and lighter skinned) so Colvin's story was taken, respun, and repackaged to make it more palatable to white people. After that, the bus boycott began and history was made, though it all started because of one rebellious teenage girl. It just goes to show you — everything awesome in the world happens because of teenage girls.